part 2 chapter

39

p hoebe again calls to me without moving her lips. her voice is still faint, far off, but i

make out her question. “why do you torment yourself so for bibb’s death? he was just one man

during four long years of combat, and you’ve told me about sam, zeke, and the others,” she

said. “you lost them too. and you must have killed lots of union soldiers. why is bibb

different?”

the sun has gone down without my notice or phoebe’s, and objects in the room are now only

blue outlines made by the full moon beyond the windows. i sense another person in the room

before i see him. his shirt sparkles turquoise in the moonlight. it’s tatternook, his black suit and

hat merging with the dark. he nods in recognition. a gasp escapes me, but then there’s a second

visitor. john bibb stands beside him. with a slight movement of his hand, he greets me. how

long have they been there? i was too wrapped up in the worst of my past to note their arrival.

now all three await my response to phoebe’s question.

the images still vibrate in the room: ahl and old hike in the pen, beards’ reaction to my

desperate plan, bibb’s motionless body as i crouch over it, lewis and his lonely cabin. these

memories have been buried for so long, hidden below recollections of my family life in

augusta. they have the shock of a fresh wound. but curiously, the pain is less than i feared.

there my secret is, out in the open for the first time. what if i’d heard myself say these things to

mary or ellen long ago? might my family have been as understanding? spoken aloud over time,

would my guilt have lost its power? the words no longer weigh so heavily that i think they’ll

crush me. i see no blame or disgust on the faces of my present audience. they don’t condemn,

but instead seem curious and accepting. warmth floods my heart as i watch phoebe sitting so

attentively, so receptive to my confession. i feel a bond with her i haven’t felt with anyone since

my death. but i can’t help thinking: if only my wife or sister were sitting there instead.

at first, the answers to phoebe’s question are formless bits careening in my mind, trying to

coalesce but unable to find the proper joining. as i wait for a response to surface, bibb has

seated himself in the parlor’s ladder-back chair. he observes me carefully. the silence deepens.

haltingly, i begin. “i understand why you’d ask that question. why my heart ached so because

of one man’s killing when i experienced so much slaughter,” i say. “but the war’s slaughter

wasn’t of my doing. i had no control over the war, but i did have some control over the welfare

of my unit. once bibb joined us at spotsylvania for the journey to fort delaware, he was one of

my men.”

i pause for a minute, guilt tightening my chest. “remember, bibb risked his life to save me at

spotsylvania courthouse and then died trying to save me from myself at fort delaware. i owed

no one else such a debt. if he hadn’t been so young and innocent, hadn’t depended upon me . . .”

i drop my head in my hands. “he could have lived a long life. the fighting was over, for

chrissake.” i look across at bibb. “you hadn’t been through the horrors we had; you might have

healed when you returned home.”

“perhaps. but we’ll never know.” he regards me sadly. “don’t you think there is more to

your melancholy than that, tom?”

“what do you mean?” i can’t believe my ears. “how could there be more?”

“look deeper. there’s more,” he says gently.

i’m confused by his words. “there’s nothing more. your death and your family’s loss have

filled every corner of my heart.”

“why is that?” he asks.

i’m irritated by his questions, until the truth breaks free. “so there would be no space to

consider the rest. all those young men, especially the ones i loved best, who lost their lives.”

i’m stunned by this admission. “and for something so foul.”

even as i speak, a frozen stream is melting within. i feel bibb’s mind lock onto mine.

tayloe’s gaunt face, sam with his bloody teeth, and zeke’s blank, drowned eyes—all appear

before me. and more. there’s mccorkle, who fought on after spotsylvania but never made it

home to his wife and babe after appomattox. there are the nine boys, almost a third of us

remaining in company d as prisoners, who died under my helpless watch as sergeant in fort

delaware. i could do nothing to stop disease and starvation.

and there are all the men who didn’t die, whom i saw every day in augusta county, but

whose war damage was visible to all lookers. there was mrs. calliston’s son ralph who shelved

goods in the general store with his one arm, the other a stump disguised by a pinned-up shirt

sleeve. there was the owner of staunton’s american hotel whose guests averted their eyes to

avoid the disfiguring burn scars across his left brow, eye socket, and cheek. there were the

numerous one-legged men every sunday at new jerusalem, a thicket of crutches sprouting from

the pews.

blue and many others simply passed away before their time. four years without adequate

food and the effects of war-contracted diseases took their toll. poor, disheveled beards buried

carrion until the end of his shortened days. he, like so many others, was crushed in spirit and

remained a ward of his family, incapable of a normal life. although mary would have cared

lovingly for him, he had traveled beyond anyone’s reach. for the rest of my life, i couldn’t

escape all those in town or on the county roads who’d lost a limb or their good sense to that

conflict. they were everywhere one turned.

“there’s more, tom,” bibb says. his eyes soften with kindness.

“i could never live up to the blessings of my life in the midst of those poor souls.” i continue.

“who was i to deserve such good fortune?” the words pour out of me. “my wedding night, the

birth of our first son, the awakening of spring in the mountains, the presentation of my daughter

cara in marriage to a neighbor’s boy—all these joyful times were marred by the shadow of what

you and all the others were missing.”

i can’t stem the flood. “twenty-six major battles. that’s how many i survived. and i escaped

smallpox, cholera, and diphtheria that killed as many as the bullets and the cannon balls. every

day i’m tormented by the question of why me and not the others.” tears flood my eyes until the

room wavers.

disappointment clouds bibb’s face. what more could he want to hear that i haven’t said? i

sit in quiet bewilderment. the answer should come easily to me; after all, i’ve always thought of

him as my younger, more innocent self, the part that died during the war. i know him so well. in

some timeless place, our bond seems to have grown lighter and sweeter, beyond my guilty

obsession. and then a bitterness arises from my stomach, pushes against my ribs, and explodes

from my lips like bile after a bout of purging. a blindfold has been lifted from my eyes, and i

understand what bibb has been waiting to hear.

“oh my lord, all this grief, pain, and death . . . yours as well, would never have happened but

for one thing. and that was the greed that kept slavery alive. the deep truth, the hard truth, is

that i murdered men so that white people could continue to torture other human beings, could

use them however they wanted, and could deny they were human like themselves. i’ve been

terrified of the painful clarity that ripped through my heart and soul during the war. i didn’t have

it in me afterward to live day to day viewing humankind in that strong light. instead, i’ve

traveled in a fog, unable to navigate its sharp edge of truth.” i hold my hands before me as if i

can see blood on them. “i’m ashamed, so ashamed.” the room falls still, even the creek’s

whispering and the calls of night birds are muffled. it occurs to me—is my repentance bibb’s

also? he wasn’t on the killing fields for very long, but he desperately wanted to be there, just as

i did, while fooling himself about the cause he was joining.

he steps toward me. he speaks slowly and with gravity. “tom, you are forgiven for my

death. you always were. let go of that guilt. but all of us bear the larger guilt.”

tatternook holds out his hand. a ray of light flashes like a shooting star and enters my heart.

the tears that have been falling there for so many years dry up. the ray goes deeper and deeper,

a pebble sinking into an ocean. i find myself in the station i glimpsed long ago in that icy prison

yard the night bibb was shot. there is the sound of an unearthly harmony, rising and falling in a

multitude of divine voices. a golden train arrives, not on wheels, but borne on the backs of

winged creatures from whom the singing comes. the brilliant glare of the rail cars almost stuns

me, and i feel a great urgency. i must get on board.

but i owe phoebe a debt of gratitude — one as deep as i owed bibb for saving me at

spotsylvania courthouse. she took pity on me and led me to this point of release. ignoring her

fear, she found an unexpected well of courage. she was as valiant as any soldier. one who

should never again feel shame. i lay my hand on her shoulder as a father might his daughter and

think how fond i’ve become of her. despite my resentment of phoebe and harry’s changes to

my house, i recognize that they’ve made it a place that will now last for generations to come. it

will stand firm and strong for others to enjoy as i did. maybe they’ll be my descendants, and my

story won’t be forgotten. i give her shoulder a squeeze of farewell. phoebe shivers, her eyes

brim with tears, and her face glows. she knows.

the station door has sailed open, and i must hurry. i take one departing look at my home and

phoebe in the library and then rush through. but just as my foot touches the embossed metal step

and i grab the shiny hand rail, everything disappears in a burst of light. there is the ear-splitting

sound of something crashing down, falling apart, shattering into jagged pieces. at my feet lies

the shriveled, lifeless body of moloch, milton’s dark god of guilt from paradise lost. the

station and the train no longer exist. my house, the farm, phoebe, tatternook, and john bibb are

gone. tom smiley is disappearing too. everything i treasured about myself has almost

evaporated. but i have no fear or sense of loss as before. there is nothing to lose. i have no

gender, no name, no position in society, or any possessions. but i am awash in peace and

contentment, pulsing with the expanding and contracting vibrations of the universe. bibb,

tatternook, phoebe, and i are all particles of a grand, luminous wave of life. i am pure

awareness, nothing more and nothing less. this is the first and last of what i am.